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The White Mulberry (Morus alba) is a short-lived, fast-growing, small to medium sized mulberry
Mulberry

Morus or Mulberry is a genus of 10?16 species of deciduous trees native to warm, temperate, and subtropical regions of Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas, with the majority of the species native to Asia....
 tree, which grows to 10–20 m tall.

The species is native to northern China
China

China is a Culture of China, an ancient civilization, and, depending on perspective, a national or multinational entity extending over a large area in East Asia....
, and is widely cultivated (and even naturalized) elsewhere. It is also known as Tuta in Sanskrit
Sanskrit

Sanskrit is a historical Indo-Aryan language, one of the liturgical languages of Hinduism and Buddhism, and one of the 22 official languages of India....
 and Tuti in Marathi.

On young, vigorous shoots, the leaves
Leaf

In botany, a leaf is an above-ground plant Organ specialized for photosynthesis. For this purpose, a leaf is typically flat and thin, to expose the cells containing chloroplast to light over a broad area, and to allow light to penetrate fully into the tissues....
 may be up to 30 cm long, and deeply and intricately lobed, with the lobes rounded.






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Encyclopedia


The White Mulberry (Morus alba) is a short-lived, fast-growing, small to medium sized mulberry
Mulberry

Morus or Mulberry is a genus of 10?16 species of deciduous trees native to warm, temperate, and subtropical regions of Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas, with the majority of the species native to Asia....
 tree, which grows to 10–20 m tall.

The species is native to northern China
China

China is a Culture of China, an ancient civilization, and, depending on perspective, a national or multinational entity extending over a large area in East Asia....
, and is widely cultivated (and even naturalized) elsewhere. It is also known as Tuta in Sanskrit
Sanskrit

Sanskrit is a historical Indo-Aryan language, one of the liturgical languages of Hinduism and Buddhism, and one of the 22 official languages of India....
 and Tuti in Marathi.

On young, vigorous shoots, the leaves
Leaf

In botany, a leaf is an above-ground plant Organ specialized for photosynthesis. For this purpose, a leaf is typically flat and thin, to expose the cells containing chloroplast to light over a broad area, and to allow light to penetrate fully into the tissues....
 may be up to 30 cm long, and deeply and intricately lobed, with the lobes rounded. On older trees, the leaves are generally 5–15 cm long, unlobed, cordate at the base and rounded to acuminate at the tip, and serrated on the margins. The leaves are usually deciduous
Deciduous

Deciduous means falling off at maturity or tending to fall off and is typically used in reference to trees or shrubs that lose their leaves seasonally and to the shedding of other plant structures such as petals after flowering or fruit when ripe....
 in winter, but trees grown in tropical regions can be evergreen
Evergreen

In botany, an evergreen plant is a plant having leaf all year round. This contrasts with deciduous plants, which completely lose their foliage for part of the year....
. The flower
Flower

A flower, sometimes known as a bloom or blossom, is the reproduction structure found in flowering plants . The biological function of a flower is to mediate the union of male sperm with female ovum in order to produce seeds....
s are single-sex catkin
Catkin

A catkin or ament is a slim, cylindrical flower cluster, with inconspicuous or no petals, usually wind-pollination but sometimes insect pollinated ....
s, with catkins of both sexes being present on each tree; male catkins are 2–3.5 cm long, and female catkins 1–2 cm long. The fruit
Fruit

The term fruit has different meanings dependent on context, and the term is not synonymous in food preparation and biology. In botany, which is the scientific study of plants, fruits are the ripened Ovary of flowering plants....
 is 1–2.5 cm long; in the species in the wild it is deep purple, but in many cultivated plants it varies from white to pink; it is sweet but insipid, unlike the more intense flavour of the Red Mulberry
Red Mulberry

The red mulberry is a species of mulberry native to Eastern United States North America, from southernmost Ontario and Vermont south to southern Florida and west to southeast South Dakota and central Texas....
 and Black Mulberry
Black Mulberry

Black mulberry is a species of mulberry. It is native to southwestern Asia, where it has been cultivated for so long that its precise natural range is unknown....
. The seeds are widely dispersed by birds, which eat the fruit and excrete the seeds.

The White Mulberry is scientifically notable for the rapid plant movement
Rapid plant movement

Rapid plant movement encompasses movement in plant structures occurring over a very short period of time, usually under one second. For example, the Venus Flytrap closes its trap in about 100 Millisecond....
 of the pollen release from its catkins. The flowers fire pollen into the air by rapidly (25 µs) releasing stored elastic energy in the stamens. The resulting movement is in excess of half the speed of sound, making it the fastest known movement in the plant kingdom.

Ethnomedical Uses

In Traditional Chinese Medicine
Traditional Chinese medicine

Traditional Chinese medicine includes a range of traditional medicine practices originating in China. Although well accepted in the mainstream of medical care throughout East Asia, it is considered an alternative medicine system in much of the western world....
, the fruit is used to treat prematurely grey hair, to "tonify" the blood, and treat constipation
Constipation

Constipation, costiveness, or irregularity, is a condition of the digestive system in which a person experiences hard feces that are difficult to expel....
 and diabetes.

The bark is used to treat cough, wheezing, edema
Edema

File:Oedema.jpgEdema or Oedema , formerly known as dropsy or hydropsy, is an abnormal accumulation of fluid beneath the skin, or in one or more cavities of the body....
, and to promote urination
Urination

Urination, also known as micturition, voiding, and, more rarely, emiction, is the process of disposing urine from the urinary bladder through the urethra to the outside of the body....
.

It is also used to treat fever, headache, red dry and sore eyes, as well as cough.

In culture

An etiological Babylonian story that was later incorporated into Greek and Roman mythology attributes the reddish purple color of the white mulberry
White Mulberry

The White Mulberry is a short-lived, fast-growing, small to medium sized mulberry tree, which grows to 10?20 m tall.The species is native to northern China, and is widely cultivated elsewhere....
 (Morus alba) fruits to the tragic deaths of the lovers Pyramus and Thisbe
Pyramus and Thisbe

The love story of Pyramus and Thisbe, is a part of Roman mythology, and is also a sentimental romance. The tale is told by Ovid in his Metamorphoses ....
.

The "White Mulberry Tree" is title of a crucial chapter in Willa Cather
Willa Cather

Willa Sibert Cather was an United States author who grew up in Nebraska. She is best known for her depictions of frontier life on the Great Plains in novels such as O Pioneers!, My ?ntonia, and The Song of the Lark....
's 1913 novel, O Pioneers!
O Pioneers!

O Pioneers! is a 1913 in literature novel by United States author Willa Cather. It was written in part when Cather was living in Cherry Valley , New York with Isabelle McClung and was completed at the McClung's home in Pittsburgh....
, in which two forbidden lovers are killed, a reference to the story of Pyramus and Thisbe.

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